Mariano Rivera is the greatest closer in baseball history and he is being inducted into the Hall of Fame this weekend after being the first player ever unanimously selected. He is one of those rare modern sports stars who almost no one has anything bad to say about.

To this day, he is held up as the ideal athlete, bestowed with endless grace and an unflappable demeanor on the mound that belied a burning competitive desire. Rivera represents a nearly unbroken succession of Yankee greatness that stretches all the way back to the 1920s, from Ruth and Gehrig to DiMaggio and Mantle, and then Reggie Jackson and Derek Jeter.

And over the past three years, he’s also served at the pleasure of a racist president, taken part in thinly veiled propaganda on behalf of an apartheid government in Israel, and gotten chummy with outright bigots and apocalyptic loons. None of this will be inscribed on his Hall of Fame plaque. It should, even if much of the sports world would very much like to pretend none of it exists.

As proof of just how awful he thinks Rivera is, Silverman dug up this tweet from January:

So he’s supportive of the efforts of the President of the United States to end a drug crisis and also help the youth of America be more active.

The depravity!

Rivera’s politics aren’t the only things that frighten the sad little DB writer, his faith does too:

But the vast majority of Evangelical Christians also believe in a particular messianic biblical prophecy: Jews must rule the Holy Land before Christ can return. Whether Rivera ascribes to those beliefs entirely is unclear, but his support for Israel and the Israel Defense Forces is a matter of public record. He has traveled to Israel on multiple occasions, possibly beginning in 2013.

Recapping Rivera’s offenses according to Robert Silverman:

Wants to keep people off drugs.

Wants American kids to exercise and have fun.

Is Christian.

Staunchly supports one of the staunchest allies the United States has.

Basically a portrait of history’s greatest monster right there.

People who politicize everything are tedious. The few I personally know are all pretty miserable.

People who have to interject politics into sports are the worst.

I can’t pretend to get inside the head of someone like Silverman. A casual search of the news surrounding Rivera’s induction into the Hall this weekend returns almost universal praise from news outlets that are all over the political spectrum.

This Daily Beast hit piece is sadly indicative of just how far some will go to excoriate anyone who deviates from the liberal hive mind. American leftists like to take for granted that most celebrities are on their side and woe be unto any of them who aren’t.

Silverman no doubt thinks he just offered the world some damning, “GOTCHA!” journalism.